Barack Obama's set to deliver a "major speech" on "what patriotism means to him and what it requires of all Americans who loves this country and want to see it do better." Since Americans do seem to have lingering doubts about the patriotism of Democrats in general and Obama in particular, and since Obama's very good at delivering setpiece speeches, this seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, I won't be able to see it live since I'll be traveling from Chicago to the Aspen Ideas Festival The Atlantic is co-hosting this week in Colorado.
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Patriotism
30 Jun 2008 07:52 am
Comments (23)
It's the I-25 corridor that is more tragic and senseless, I think.
Isn't the Aspen Ideas Festival one of those kook gatherings where people who think they are smarter and more important than us hoi polloi give us disasters like the Iraq War?
That thing is a naked Henry Kissenger and giant burning owl away from being a freak show.
I suspect that the world would be infinitely better off if an asteroid struck Davos in January with a follow up in Aspen around now.
How stupid. The Republicans call him unpatriotic, and he legitimizes the charge by making a speech to refute the charge.
When will Dems learn than victory comes not by defending yourself from charges leveled by those on the opposite side to provoke and smear but attacking your opponent?
The Dems continue to live up to their caricature perfected by the Republicans.
Karl Rove must be laughing his ass off.
Gregor...It is simply defending himself from republican attacks...his "patriotism" is a real issue for people who don't know much about him. Getting out there and explaining himself can only help. The more people see of him, the more they like him.....
Does anyone have details on when the speech is set for?
Gregor...It is not simply defending himself from republican attacks...his "patriotism" is a real issue for people who don't know much about him. Getting out there and explaining himself can only help. The more people see of him, the more they like him.....
Does anyone have details on when the speech is set for?
Barack Obama's set to deliver a "major speech" on "what patriotism means to him and what it requires of all Americans who loves this country and want to see it do better."
Awesome! A set of requirements, hopefully arduous ones, for the ultra-patriotic conservatives out there, while we post-nationalistic liberal types are conveniently off the hook.
It's the I-25 corridor that is more tragic and senseless, I think.
Not unlike the death of President Gerald Ford.
Next up: a major speech by Obama about what it means to be a shifty and uppity African American pol nurtured by the corrupt Chicago political machine.
I don't believe patriotism is important. It's a bogus concept, impossible to define, that's drilled into kids' heads from the time they start school when they're forced to stand and recite words they don't understand.
I'd prefer if he just got up there and quoted Samuel Johnson.
The philosopher Berdayev, whose credentials in these matters included being jailed/exiled by both the Czar and the Bolsheviks, always distinguished between patriotism and nationalism. The former he saw as an identification with, a love for, one's land and one's people. It can be abused, corrupted, but it stands for something foundational in the heart. The head in the meantime tells us, rightly, that nationalism may be in practice a necessary extension of that, but it's not the same thing. It's a matter of states and governments and politics, and should always be treated with the pragmatism and mistrust that democracy requires. I've spent a lifetime believing that we on the Left not only can, but should, see ourselves as patriots. As Jefferson saw, this need not -- should not -- exclude an internationalism that respects the fact that ours is not the only "loveable" land and people.
gsk+, Berdayev and Solzhenitsyn had the benefit of having been born into Russia and being Russians. To them, there was a love of their people and country that existed outside of the support for any particular regime or any particular national initiative.
In America, we're faced with a different problem: our country does not exist outside of the existence of the Constitution and the government. Some people, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were able to thread the needle of the problem by claiming that the promises of equality and freedom were what America "really" was, apart from his present reality of southern white lawless rampages and segregation. He succeeded threading the needle, but most of those arguments about what the Constitution "really" promises and what freedom "really" is devolve into circular arguments where the dissenting liberal patriot is just trying to claim that his criticism of America is only *really* trying to get America back to what it *really* is all about. I'm not sure that this is convincing, or that it's even true: sometimes a critique of the country's actions will inevitably result in criticism of the country itself, and maybe some problems, injustices, an oppressions *have always been part and parcel of the country's legal system*.
And since the USA doesn't really exist outside of the legal framework that established it, it's hard to make a patriotic appeal when claiming that it needs to be fixed.
"The philosopher Berdayev, whose credentials in these matters included being jailed/exiled by both the Czar and the Bolsheviks,..."
Just curious: why does landing in the hoosegow and then getting booted from one's homeland qualify as a "credential" on matters nationalistic?
You may as well quote bin Laden.
"The philosopher Berdayev, whose credentials in these matters included being jailed/exiled by both the Czar and the Bolsheviks,..."
Just curious: why does landing in the hoosegow and then getting booted from one's homeland qualify as a "credential" on matters nationalistic?
You may as well quote bin Laden.
"The philosopher Berdayev, whose credentials in these matters included being jailed/exiled by both the Czar and the Bolsheviks,..."
Just curious: why does landing in the hoosegow and then getting booted from one's homeland qualify as a "credential" on matters nationalistic?
You may as well quote bin Laden.
Maybe I am a poor sap, but America is more than a legal framework... It is a set of values and ideals and I conside someone who stands up for those ideals and represents those values a patriot.
Philip Dukes, we are perhaps both poor saps. This poor sap holds that position in a way that's quite OK with the heart of Tyro's well-stated correction and caveat. Interestingly, I first really encountered Berdayev in conversations with an African-American civil-rights activist in the 60's, who introduced me to him, and who once said to me in that language that, "There is a country here, not just a government -- and a lot of us Black Folk actually love it, and are fighting for reason to love it more". This connects with the insights of Adams and Jeferson that the Revolution was won before it was fought -- but still had to be fought. Using that analogy, the Declaration (especially as emended by Garry Wills' reading of the Gettysburg Address)could be seen as the "patriotic" document that the "nationalistic" Constitution fleshed out and made effective. America "is", no doubt, the Constitution -- because the Constitution grounds and effects a set of values and ideals that make it necessary and possible.
He's good.....
gsk+, Utah Phillips often said (I think mis-attributed to Mark Twain, but maybe not)"Love of Country, Always. Love of the Government when they deserve it!" I think that also sums up the same sentiment - and a not unpopular one.
Isn't Bill Clinton a regular fixture at Aspen? Try and catch his presentation. You know everyone's just gonna try and bait him into kvetching about the primary campaign.
My - Since Americans do seem to have lingering doubts about the patriotism of Democrats in general...
It might have to do with rejecting Democrats like Andrew Jackson, Cleveland, FDR, TRuman, JFK about 40 years ago to the Soviet-Jewish progressive-EuroLeft critique that for 40 years has preached America is uniquely evil. Bathed in racist blood from birth and all about oppression of minorities, sexism, evil capitalist exploitation, and stupid dupes too dumb to go to college or Brandeis Law or make serious money - fighting for the silly joke America is.
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Tyro - In America, we're faced with a different problem: our country does not exist outside of the existence of the Constitution and the government.
What horsehit. The Constitution is a scrap of paper created by the People through about a dozen of their Representatives wanting their second effort to be better than the failed Draft of Articles of Confederation. It is simply an Operating Manual that lays out the details and boundaries in a society to best reach the goals of the Preamble.
A scrap of paper that since then has seen the Amending process crippled beyond repair, and has only had the effective input of a few hundred lawyers dressed in robes contrasted with nearly a billion Americans - those here today - those come and gone - that defined what the nation of America is, what it's accomplishments and culture are.
A scrap of paper, not like the Holy Qu'ran whose pages are so sacred to Fundie Muslims that they must wash their hands before touching paper & reading, whose only responsibility is blind following and belief.
Until mid-20th Century, except for wars, Customs, Navy the Federal Government was barely a factor in the lives of average Americans.
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Maybe I am a poor sap, but America is more than a legal framework... It is a set of values and ideals and I conside someone who stands up for those ideals and represents those values a patriot.
Posted by Phillip Dukes
No sap, are you. You say what "Rule of Law! Rule of Law!" Lefties miss. It is the values and ideals that came collectively from billions of small and large decisions by Americans, and those decisions they inherited from English culture and "best ideas and practices" of other cultures, even ancient ones.
When the "Sacred Parchment" blundered, and badly, on matters like slavery and limited vision on war powers...The People had to rely on their values and tell the Justices to shove off. The "legalistic" left, is frequently in direct opposition to democracy, American cultural and religious values.
Indeed, the Civil War Copperheads of the North were those that thought the South had a good legal case that great lawyers like Taney had backed, and nothing, but nothing, was worth "a single Union soldier's mother's tears."
Contrary to media myth, FDRs court-packing was not defeated by an enraged population of SCOTUS-worshippers after critical Depression recovery were voted down as unconstitutional. It was FDR's threats that he would not abide them usurping the will of the People and their democratically elected representatives that changed the revanchist court's mind and allowed other New deal legislation to happen. The Court-packing plan was not defeated. It was made unecessary. The berobed lawyers change in behavior after FDR's reality check to them was referred to as "The switch in time that saved 9".
In the present era Leftist patriotism has themes of using courts to bypass democracy, saying the highest form of patriotism is criticizing America for all the inherent evil of whites and foul private enterprise and barely crediting any scant good it does as attributable to courageous law-breaking dissenters, the Left's constant anti-military acts, condemning nearly everything Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR did as "illegal". With cultural wars on Christianity, the stupid stable family with a white picket fence in a stupid safe vanilla suburb, multi-culti approving textbooks, PC and past Lefty attempts at speech codes, CEOs and generals and priests as mostly criminals. MLK worship as the one Godlike American, till Black Messiah came...
And demanding Americans follow the "higher authority" of International Law no peoples, only self-annointed Elites gathered together and crafted.
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gsk+ America "is", no doubt, the Constitution -- because the Constitution grounds and effects a set of values and ideals that make it necessary and possible.
More horsehit. America is far more than that. Jefferson wrote and believed that each generation should write it's own Constitution, about every 20-25 years so that the living are not trapped in what they think are the mistakes and bad ideas of past generations no longer in the polity.
Other nations routinely mark a period where the Constitution is revised, mistakes corrected, and the document is updated for modern times. Doing so does not "unmake" France, or Brazil, or Vietnam....or Russia, or Sweden, or Croatia,,
The status quo is hardly admirable. The US Constitution is badly out of date, full of "inoperative" clauses and rights, enshrining bad mistakes like birthright citizenship of progeny of illegal invaders to our lands and aristocratic lifetime tenure of judges. One of the few that allows a lawyer elite to go beyond the language to "emenations and penumbras" to make matters unwritten about part of the force of the document.
Worse, the Amending process is now all but dead
as both parties agree, the last true significant change was the elimination of the poll tax nearly a half century ago (poll tax eliminated -1962) - and instead we now see lawyers claiming supremacy over the Congress, States, and President in some votes, and all of it hinges on a single, feckless swing vote that one of the main culprits (O'Connor) said she might have voted the other way if she had it to do again and if her mood was different at the time..
As a 2004 MBA class with 3/4th international students said to me - Chinese, Chileans, Swedes, Indians, Saudis, Brits - leaving the most critical decisions to a 5-4 vote by lawyers appointed 20-30 years ago is a remarkable fucked up way to run a country. And a big reason America has become a wastrel debtor nation and is in decline..
The real America is in foundations in Greece and Rome, killing the Muslim invader at Tours to save our culture from annihilation, in the Reniassance and Reformation, the Glorious Revolution and in 230 years of the collective thoughts and accomplishemnets of Americans, some more important than others, but TDR Jr did more at D-Day than Warren Burger ever did with his life, and the designer of the Golden Gate Bridge and the laborer pouring concret did something far more elegant and contributing to what America is than the 8 or so people hashing out the 3rd Amendment over a few days.
The works of Twain or poems of Whitman mean more to America than the writings of William O Douglas.
The creator of the Frosty Shakes at drive-ins or the 1979 Nebraska beauty queen winner more a part of America than the Jewish transnationalist Ruth Bader Ginsberg will ever be.
All but a minute part of American values and beliefs are outside the Constitution, and need no document to ground them in order for them to be expressed.
Anybody who "loves" an abstraction such as a "country" - still less THIS country - deserves a bullet in the head.
Fuck patriotism. There is no distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Obama is sucking up to the worst in Americans, not the best. Meanwhile, he can't be bothered to take a stand on the School of the Americas.
Change that ain't happening...
Obama Waffles on School of the Americas
http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff06262008.html
For a candidate who talks the talk on human rights, Barack Obama has little to say about the infamous School of the Americas (SOA). Originally established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946, the school later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia in 1984. Since its inception, the institution has instructed more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in military and law-enforcement tactics.
The Pentagon itself has acknowledged that in the past the School of the Americas utilized training manuals advocating coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions. After receiving their training at the institution, officers went on to commit countless human rights atrocities in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia.
Activists long lobbied Congress to shut down the school, and in the waning days of the Clinton presidency they nearly achieved their goal. In July 1999, the House passed an amendment that cut funding for the military institution, but the Senate decided to pass its own version of the bill that included funding. Compromise legislation between the House and Senate deleted the funding cut, effectively restoring public support for the school. Shortly afterwards Congress renamed the school Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and revised the institution’s structure and curriculum.
Now fast forward to the 2006 mid-term Congressional election: hoping to make use of their newfound majority on Capitol Hill, some Democrats sought to eliminate WHINSEC’s funding once and for all. Shortly after their victory in November they nearly succeeded with 203 legislators voting against ongoing public support of the school and 214 in favor. The closeness of the vote suggested that if the Democrats were able to increase their legislative majority in 2008, then the WHINSEC might indeed be history.
Outside the halls of Congress a number of prominent organizations joined calls to shut WHINSEC including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the NAACP, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, and over 100 U.S. Catholic Bishops.
Still, the Democratic presidential candidates refused to take a stand against WHINSEC. In fact, the only two Democrats who expressed opposition to the institution were long shots Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich (on the Republican side, Ron Paul said he too would shutter WHINSEC).
In the early stages of the presidential race, Kucinich pledged to close the school if he were elected. A longtime foe of WHINSEC who had voted repeatedly to close the institution while serving in Congress, Kucinich even attended a political protest held at the gates of the school in late 2007.
Obama likes to employ soaring rhetoric when discussing human rights. But late last year, he failed to take a strong position opposing WHINSEC. When pressed, the candidate praised Congress’ revision of the school’s curriculum but said that he wanted to continue to evaluate the institution.
What more information could Obama possibly need to reach a final decision on the matter? An Obama spokesman said the senator "has not committed to closing down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, but he will take a hard look at the program and the progress it has made once he is elected." The spokesman reiterated Obama was pleased with the institution's inclusion of human rights courses.
To put this in all in perspective then, on this issue Obama has staked out a position to the right of Ron Paul, many members of Congress, and mainstream labor and Church organizations.
On the other hand, try as he might to skirt the issue, Obama will soon be obliged to take a clearer stand on WHINSEC. That’s because the House recently approved the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2009. The amendment obliges WHINSEC to publicly release the names, rank, country of origin, courses, and dates of attendance of the school's graduates and instructors.
Legislators pressed for the measure because in recent years WHINSEC has withheld vital information that would have helped to identify the perpetrators of massacres, targeted assassinations, and human rights abuses committed in Latin America. In a resounding defeat for the Pentagon, the measure was approved by a vote of 220 to 189. The amendment now heads to the Senate where all eyes will be on Obama.
And fuck "Frosty Shakes" and the 1979 Nebraska beauty pageant winner - who probably looks like shit now thirty years later.
Oh, and fuck the Ku Klux Klan.
Comments closed July 14, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
When you head out this way...keep a close eye on our transportation infrastructure. If you're flying into DIA and driving up to Aspen, you're going to get a front row seat on the infamous I-70 corridor. I'm curious to hear your impressions.
Posted by Herb | June 30, 2008 8:18 AM